About me
Head of Department/prefekt at the Department for Medicine, Huddinge (MedH) and research Group Leader for Immunological tolerance and transfusion immunology at HERM, KI.
I am a professor of basic immunology, especially clinically applied cell therapy and transplantation, at the Department of Medicine, Huddinge. I moved here in 2011, after two decades working as a scientist at the Karolinska Campus in Solna.
I gained my PhD in 1993 at the Department of Tumor Biology, Karolinska Institutet, KI and I finished my medical training in 1996. From 1996 to 1999, I worked as a postdoctoral scientist at the Institut de Génétique et de Biologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire (IGBMC), Strasbourg, France.
In 1999, I was awarded the Young Investigator Award by the Cancer Research Institute in the USA, and received the Swedish Society of Medicine's young senior research fellow prize in 2001. In 2003, I became associate professor (docent) in immunology at KI and from 2011, obtained my professorship.
During the period 1999-2010 I conducted research at MTC, KI, with funding from the Wenner-Gren Foundations, the Swedish Cancer Society, Vetenskapsrådet, Karolinska Institutet and the Karolinska University Hospital. My main research interests are the regulation of Natural Killer (NK) cell specificity.
Research description
NK cells (natural killer cells) are a type of lymphocyte that is considered part of the non-adaptive immune system and can recognize and kill virus-infected cells and cancer cells. When the immune system recovers after a stem cell transplantation, NK cells can contribute to important anti-cancer effects in patients with leukaemia - a reaction called Graft-versus-Leukaemia (GvL).
One of my research aims is to understand the molecular mechanisms that govern the formation of NK cells in the body. We are particularly interested in how NK cell are “educated” in vivo, how they learn to distinguish self from non self and which mechanisms that regulate the responsiveness of NK cells. More recently, my group has also started to expore the role of NK cells s immune barriers to blod and platelet transfusions in patients.
Academic honours, awards and prizes
Appointed Professor of basal immunology, especially clinically applied cell therapy and transplantation at Karolinska Institutet in 2011.